Chapter 36:
I stood on Bard's porch, staring at the lake flowing by, underneath the town. I could hear the dwarves that remained with me talking softly, see them shooting me
Kili came over and looked decidedly nervous. I glared at him. "Don't you dare - you're planning on leaving me behind."
I realized that the other dwarves were watching us, and there was a huge amount of awkwardness as nobody was sure what to say, and I was surprised to come to the conclusion that they all were collaborating on the idea. It took almost a full minute before Dori said: "Yes."
But I wasn't looking at him. I was looking at Kili, "How could you do this? Why?"
Kili answered reluctantly, "Because we didn't want you to come. I didn't want you to come. Didn't want to put you in danger."
To my utter surprise, Fili burst out, "Yeah, and what did I tell you? 'Freya should make her own decision, she can take care of herself, she won't appreciate your overprotectiveness.' But did you listen? No! I told you that nothing can trick her, not even you."
It seemed that the dwarves were divided on this.
Very divided, it turned out. Eventually, a shouting match between Fili and Kili escalated to all the dwarves yelling at Kili. And despite my frustration with him, my anger, despite that I understood that this had been entirely his idea and the others hadn't wanted to do it, but had gone along to make him happy, I couldn't let them yell at him like that.
So I jumped between my dwarf and the other dwarves. "Oi! Don't yell at him on my behalf! If I want to tell him not to do that, I'll tell him! I don't need you to tell him! So shut up!"
Kili looked at me in surprise. I could tell that he hadn't expected me to defend him, and that was okay.
I hadn't known I was going to, either.
After enduring monotonous apologies for other things they had done previously on the quest, I told the dwarves simply to promise, all together, that they wouldn't do something like this again.
I went back onto the porch and I sat in a sort of pout as Kili came up in front of me again and I stopped him before he began: "I'm not that angry with you."
"You're not?"
I shrugged. "No. Why would I be? You wanted to protect me. That's okay."
He didn't believe me. I could tell. "Sure, Freya," he replied, leaning against the rail, his upper leg less than an inch from my head, his eyes squinting a bit as the low (but not setting) sun's rays hit his face.
I sighed. "Okay, so I'm mad at you. I don't like it when you're overprotective sometimes. It's not like I do it to you. You seem to think that girls can't take care of themselves - or that I can't. It's not fair. You don't even give me a chance to tell you no, you just go on ahead and do it. If you're going to do that, at least consult me first."
"You wouldn't let me do it if I asked you about it."
"True as that may be, it's Not Fair to try and leave me behind. You could die out there in that battle, Kili! I wouldn't be there to save all yours asses from what you'll do that's stupid, I can't even imagine the dumb stuff you'll end up doing, it's absolutely mad!" I made sure to emphasise the "Not Fair" so that he knew that it was capitalised.
He sighed. "It was dumb, yes. But it would have kept you safe, and then I would've been more at ease, I guess."
I stood up fully and grabbed the flaps of his great big coat, pulling him towards me so his face was less than an inch from mine. "And I would have died from worry. While you were finally, for the first time in this quest, worry-free, I would have absolutely killed myself from worrying about you."
He stared at me for a second, until I released him and sat back down, ignoring him again as I studied my fingers.
I could hear him swallow, and I almost (almost) regretted not kissing him while I was in the right place. But in front of the other dwarves... I wasn't sure that was a good idea.
Yikes. Short. Bad. Moving on!